Demonstrating Rosa: the fairness solution for any Data Analytic pipeline

Abstract: Most datasets of interest to the analytics industry are impacted by various forms of human bias. The outcomes of Data Analytics [DA] or Machine Learning [ML] on such data are therefore prone to replicating the bias. As a result, a large number of biased decision-making systems based on DA/ML have recently attracted attention. In this paper we introduce Rosa, a free, web-based tool to easily de-bias datasets with respect to a chosen characteristic. Rosa is based on the principles of Fair Adversarial Networks, developed by illumr Ltd., and can therefore remove interactive, non-linear, and non-binary bias. Rosa is stand-alone pre-processing step / API, meaning it can be used easily with any DA/ML pipeline. We test the efficacy of Rosa in removing bias from data-driven decision making systems by performing standard DA tasks on five real-world datasets, selected for their relevance to current DA problems, and also their high potential for bias. We use simple ML models to model a characteristic of analytical interest, and compare the level of bias in the model output both with and without Rosa as a pre-processing step. We find that in all cases there is a substantial decrease in bias of the data-driven decision making systems when the data is pre-processed with Rosa.